Journal of an Underachiever – Back to the States

Before I get started, I’d like to welcome any new readers. I started this blog primarily to discuss what I have written and what I am currently working on. I discovered right away that I wasn’t going to be able to post once a week if I restricted myself that much. After much interior discussion I realized that the one thing I could write about on a regular basis was me. I’m not claiming to have an exciting history, but members of the family had urged my mom and my wife’s mom to record what they could remember from their childhood and on. Neither of them did, and that part of the family history is gone forever. I decided to rectify that situation and had a blog in place that was going virtually unused. Thus I started recording what I could remember of my past.

Recently, I wondered if anyone who stumbled across my book Peacemaker might be interested in my life and what led me to write. I figured I could make it available. It couldn’t hurt. I also plan to throw in some comments about Peacemaker and my work in progress, Teleportal.

This is what you are looking at now. It is July of 1952. My family has just returned from four years on Guam, and I have just turned fourteen.

Since my last post I looked up the General A. E. Anderson. She turns out to have been put in service hauling passengers around the Pacific in October of 1949. Since we went to Guam in September of 1948, she had to be the ship that took us home rather than the one that took us to Guam. There are several write ups about her on the Internet, if you’re interested.

The trip to Guam had been non-stop, but going back to the States we stopped at Wake Island, a coral atoll so low that a small tsunami would have completely flooded it, and at either Midway Island, home of the Gooney Bird (Laysan Albatross) or Johnston Atoll, which barely has room for a runway. We didn’t dock. Instead, we sent a tender ashore with mail and what-not at each location.

We also stopped at Oahu, and I immediately fell in love with Hawaii. We stopped long enough to do some touristy things. We visited an orchid hot house (yes, even on Oahu they protect these special flowers when they grow them). I was fascinated by the incredible variety. We stopped at a hotel for lunch. I ordered a cheese burger. I know, no sense of adventure. This place turned out to be a pretty high class establishment. When my sandwich arrived, it was open-faced. The cheese was a sauce. I was supposed to eat it with a fork. Instead, I closed the sandwich and ate it what I considered the normal way. I dripped cheese sauce all over. I believe it was on this trip that I first saw the Upside Down Falls. Somewhere on the Pali Highway in the mountains outside Honolulu there is a view of a waterfall that when the wind blows strongly enough starts down but gets blown upward so hard it turns around and doesn’t reach the bottom.

One of the passengers on the ship was a redheaded army brat named Iris. It was love at first sight — but I was too shy to even talk to her. We crossed paths while touring Oahu, and I couldn’t even wave. Oh well, it would never have worked out. She was headed for Kansas, and I was on my way to the backwoods of Missouri. As we were driving through Kansas on our way to Missouri, I could swear I saw her in a school bus we passed, but I’ll never know. I even worked up the courage to wave. And then she was gone.

Our next stop after Honolulu was San Francisco. Before we left Guam we had ordered a new Ford. It cost us all of $2400, and we picked it up in San Francisco. From there we visited my new Aunt Ruth’s family and drove through Yosemite National Park. I don’t know which came first. The only thing I remember about Ruth’s parents’ home was that while we were there, the Seventeen Year Locusts were out and incredibly loud.

I suppose I should digress briefly. My uncle Pat came to work on Guam while we were there. He met and fell in love with a pert redheaded company nurse, Ruth. They got married while we were on Guam. One thing I’ll always remember is that Ruth gave Susan a shot in front of the rest of us. She was so nervous (family presence, I suppose) she had a hard time giving the shot. At one point the syringe came loose from the needle with the needle stuck in Susan’s arm. She did finally get it done.

I remember one thing about Yosemite and that was driving along a stretch of road that had an incredible drop off on one side. There was a wide valley below. I could swear it was over a thousand feet beneath us, but I suspect it just seemed that way.

Our next stop was Denver. Our friends from Guam, the Cooks, had returned to the States before we did. They had a home in south Denver, which at that time bordered farmland. The house and the farmland are all gone now. We spent several days with them visiting the mountains and getting to know something about this beautiful state. Strangely enough that had nothing to do with us settling here when I retired.

Our next stop was Missouri. More on that the next time.

In case you’re interested, I have a website that right now focuses primarily on Peacemaker, gordonsavage.com.